


Fata Morgana

by PasdeChameau



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Because assuming anything else makes me sad, Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff, For the purposes of this fic I've assumed Silna told Harry her real name at some point, Handwavey science talk, Not on Goodsir's part though obvs because he's an angel, Period-Typical Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 15:59:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17870288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PasdeChameau/pseuds/PasdeChameau
Summary: A moment of beauty after a harrowing night. Set during Episode 7.





	Fata Morgana

**Author's Note:**

> See end for notes, apologies, etc.

It’s early yet when Goodsir wakes, and Silna is gone. He runs his palm over the valley her body has left in the bedding—a whole geography marking her absence. Had she come to him the night before seeing only a problem to settle, an obligation to fulfill? There was little enough space in her life for sentiment, certainly, but she spared what kindnesses she could; he remembers a story she told him once, about slitting the throat of a dog that had snapped its leg with an ill-placed step. Was that what she was thinking of, when she’d laid her arm across him?

Perhaps not: the flap of the tent twitches and Silna ducks inside once more, flashing her spare smile at him as his heart wobbles on its axis. She extends a hand, pulls him to his feet and then into the cutting light outside. No doubt she will be wanting morning rations, and with that thought, Harry falls to worrying. Separated from her people as she is, she must be nearly as desperate for food as they. Yet how can he, in good conscience, allow her to take her fill of the poison they have brought with them to this place? Or rather, allow her to continue to do so, for he remembers now (and painfully) the little mound of lead pellets in her berth on _Erebus_ , stacked neat upon a shelf as the offerings the crew had left for her—ribbons and necklaces looped about crossbeams—swayed like seaweed far above. Has she doomed herself already, lingering too near and for too long?

But Silna doesn’t lead him to the line now forming by the makeshift galley. Indeed, she draws him away from the press of people, towards the edges of the camp, ignoring his halfhearted backwards gestures. Ignores too the warning shout of the marine—Hammond—on duty, though Harry himself does not.

“‘Ey! You there!” Hammond shouts, then fumbles for his cap when he sees who he is addressing. “Ah, Mr. Goodsir, begging your pardon, sir. But you can’t very well go wandering off with that Eski. She’s liable to—“

“Yes, thank you,” Harry interrupts, then pauses, cheeks flushed, to will himself calm. He spreads his hands appealingly, “I—I think I’d better see what she wants, though, don’t you think? She knows these parts—may have knowledge of game. Surely Captain Crozier wouldn’t countenance any delay, if there is a possibility of fresh meat.”

Hammond bites his lip and glances pleadingly at the tents huddled at his back. Then he sighs, chivvying them onwards with his rifle. “All the same, sir, I’d turn round if she tries to take you out of earshot.”

Harry nods. “Of course. Thank you.”

He jogs some ten or twenty paces to where Silna has paused, brow furrowed as she glances back at him. His chest aches at the sight; such uncertainty doesn’t suit her. “I’m sorry,” he begins, “He doesn’t—”. But what, after all, can he say? “I’m sorry,” he repeats.

A thin and treacherous silence descends—one that Silna, Harry remembers suddenly, can’t break herself. Yet she surprises him, just as his vision begins to swim, her palm pressing flat against his chest. Once, he might have seized on the gesture as absolution, but now he dares ask it, ask her, for nothing more than what he can be sure she intends—the weight of flesh on flesh. He covers her hand with his own. After a moment, she leads him onward, still clasping his hand in hers.

As they clamber over a ridge, slipping amongst the shale, Harry sees at last why Silna has brought him here. There are no caribou, no ptarmigan, not even a lone white bear, and for a heartbeat the disappointment he feels has shape and heft and—God help him—taste. It would bring him to his knees, were it not for what he sees instead: a wall of white, pure and gleaming, spanning the horizon, floating above the land like the gates of heaven itself.

There is something almost awful about such a shock of beauty. It wipes every thought from his mind, and thus it takes him a moment to understand what he is looking at: a mirage—a spectral image of the ice cast upwards into the the warm air that must be riding high above them. The knowledge does not diminish his sense of treading on sacred ground.

Silna points to him, then to her eye, then outward toward the sky, her whole posture aslant in question. _Have you seen such things before._

“Not like this, no. Nothing so spectacular.”

She glances upward, aligning herself by the sun, then gestures again. Eastward, towards nothing in particular. Or towards England, perhaps; he had used such reference points to explain it to her.

He shakes his head. “No. Not there.” When he turns to look at Silna, though, she is still regarding him expectantly, and so he continues, patching the unfamiliar words together as best he can. “It needs cold air below—near the earth—and warm air above. Then the light bends like this.”

Silna tilts her head, then gestures oddly—laying one of her hands atop the other for a moment, then stacking them the opposite way. She repeats the motion a second time before Goodsir understands, and when he does he nearly smiles; she has the mind of a scientist, more inquiring than half the dons he’d known at Edinburgh. It is only a shame his vocabulary is too limited to fully satisfy her curiosity.

“Backwards—the sky upon the ground. It looks like water, I think. In hot places, a man thinks he is walking towards a lake, but dies of thirst.”

Silna nods once, thoughtful, and they stand side by side for several moments, twin pillars beneath the sky’s white arch. He startles to hear her voice, and the frown it carries.

“Cruel.” She has struggled to form the word around her maimed tongue; the irony seems inescapable, and yet—

He looks toward the mirage once more, sees the white cresting the horizon, a wave that will never break. _Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know._ There are, perhaps, crueler places even than this.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been fiddling with this for like a month and a half, because I didn't feel like it had all come together. I still feel that way, but now I've resigned myself to the fact that it's not going to, so, uh, enjoy! Like, writing realistically stilted dialogue while also attempting to explain inferior and superior mirages while also not actually understanding science yourself is hard, it turns out. The one thing I did manage to glean is that superior mirages are actually less likely to occur in warmer months, but I was already committed to this idea so I just sort of ignored that fact. I do, however, stand by the idea that Harry would probably have read about inferior mirages (i.e. "oasis mirages/wet road mirages") but not have actually seen one, because they were a lot less common before paved roads were everywhere.
> 
> Goodsir mentally quotes Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" because, idk, I needed a way to wrap things up. Did I mention this fic gave me problems?


End file.
